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Finding a Luxurious Home Away From Home

A vacation rental in Riviera Maya, Mexico, from Luxury.homeaway.com. Rates, which can vary greatly, start at $1,550 a night.Credit
HomeAway

Websites like Airbnb and Couchsurfing have long helped travelers save money by renting and swapping their homes (or merely their couches) rather than pay for hotels. But as the sharing economy evolves, and as luxury travel grows, rental and home swap sites are increasingly catering to travelers with the desire (and budget) for a more sumptuous home away from home.

While a spotlight is on luxury properties, vacation rentals both high and low offer more space, privacy and amenities than most hotels. Little wonder then that the number of people renting vacation homes has continued to rebound since the recession. More adults in the United States are choosing to stay in rentals, according to a report by the market research company PhoCusWright, and the portion of the vacation rental market booked online has grown rapidly, moving from 12 percent in 2007 to 24 percent in 2012.

All of this comes despite concerns about how much sites like Airbnb cost states like New York (where it’s often illegal to rent your apartment while you’re away) in lost hotel tax dollars, as well as potential safety and health-code violations.

TripAdvisor.com, which has a database of more than 400,000 vacation rental listings, deepened its commitment to the rental market this year by rolling out a “peace of mind guarantee,” assuring travelers who rent through TripAdvisor’s online payment system that they will be reimbursed up to $10,000 if certain problems arise, such as if the home “does not materially match the description” or if “the guest cannot enter the home.” The guarantee is provided by FlipKey, a subsidiary of TripAdvisor. (More information: Tripadvisor.com/pages/peace_of_mind.html.)

New rental models and sites like Tansler.com and Cosmopolithome.com continue to sprout. Yet there is perhaps no surer indicator of the popularity of renting than the announcement late last month that in 2014 Expedia.com will begin including on its website vacation rentals in the United States and Mexico from HomeAway.com. If you can’t wait, the travel search site Hipmunk.com already does this, allowing users to search for apartment, home and private room rentals from Airbnb and HomeAway as well as hotels.

HomeAway, which owns several vacation rental sites including VRBO and VacationRentals, is among the travel companies branching into the luxury market with Luxury Rentals from HomeAway. The listings can be found at Luxury.homeaway.com, which includes villas, estates, castles and private islands in 40 countries.

Jon Gray, HomeAway’s senior vice president of the Americas, said the new site is something of a response to research showing that luxury travel is one of the fastest-rising segments of the industry. He also cited a PhoCusWright report that asked travelers about the leisure travel accommodations they used in the last year and found that more chose to stay in upscale hotels in 2012 compared with 2011. And, he said, HomeAway’s internal studies show that travelers consider that “the most important element of making a vacation luxurious is the accommodation.”

A recent search on HomeAway for a rental in Mexico turned up an oceanfront, six-bedroom villa in Cabo San Lucas with indoor and outdoor showers, Wii and a 60-inch LCD TV in the living room for $3,500 to $4,500 a night. On the Thai island of Koh Samui, there was a beachfront villa with decks, gardens and an entertainment area, AV room and bar for $1,100 to $2,415 a night. And in the Bahamas? A private island for $75,250 to $119,000 a week. Known as Peacock Island, it has three villas with a total of seven bedrooms, a staff of 13 (including a chef and a masseur), an infinity pool, a tennis court, a yoga deck and a gym. To get there, the owners recommend booking a 15-minute charter flight from Nassau — $800 one way.

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A rental in Palm Springs, Calif., from Luxury.homeaway.com. Prices from $2,600 a night.Credit
HomeAway

HomeAway’s listings are evaluated based on “luxury characteristics” — location and kitchen features are examples — by travel professionals at Andrew Harper, the luxury travel review company that publishes the Hideaway Report newsletter. The site has more than 800 properties with amenities like cinemas, wine cellars, yachts and helicopter landing pads.

The nightly prices are high, though as Mr. Gray pointed out, most renters travel as a family or in groups and would otherwise have to book multiple hotel rooms. They wouldn’t have common areas in which to eat or watch television, he added.

Home swap sites, which allow members to trade their houses or apartments, are also making sure that travelers who want certain high-end amenities can easily find a match.

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On Lovehomeswap.com, one of the larger home exchange clubs, members can refine search results for things like at-home gyms, pools and balconies. They can also filter properties by selecting options such as “ski chalet,” “on the river” and “by the sea.”

Some homes are available for either swapping or renting, and the site offers three monthly subscription tiers: silver ($15.75), gold ($19.08) and platinum ($20.75).

Travelers looking for something a bit more permanent may also find that it’s becoming simpler to find and acquire vacation properties in upscale resort towns.

Vacatia.com, an online start-up, is striving to be the StubHub for vacation ownership timeshares: Visitors to the site can find resale deals on timeshares or fractional interests, while owners of properties can market and sell them. The site has more than 13,000 listings in the United States and North America, including Westin’s Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas in Maui, Hawaii; Grand Residences by Marriott, Lake Tahoe in California and Disney’s Hilton Head Island Resort in South Carolina.

Given the appeal of being at home, even if it isn’t yours, maybe it’s no surprise that the very places renters and swappers shun — hotels — are also embracing the trend.

At WestHouse New York, a luxury boutique hotel opening in Manhattan next month with rooms starting at $499 a night, guests will be referred to as “hotel residents” and will have access to common spaces with names like “the den” and “the terrace.”

As for the atmosphere, WestHouse promises to be “reminiscent of a luxurious private residence.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 24, 2013, on Page TR2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Home Away From Home. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe